Now large crowds were traveling with Jesus; and he turned and said to them, "Whoever comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters, yes, and even life itself, cannot be my disciple. Whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple.” Whoever does not hate? Really, Jesus? I love my parents. I love my spouse. I love my children. I love my siblings. I love them so much I went to the coast this week for four whole days, and we had a great time because we love each other. I struggle with this portion of scripture because I have such deep love for my family, and it is within the context of my love for my family that I learned about Jesus, and I learned about the love of God. It is in that love of family that I found what love is.
This Gospel reading today is an excellent example of how the so called plain meaning of Scripture is really not possible. The idea of literalism really doesn’t work out in the end. Proof-texting is not a good way to engage the Scripture. Because the plain meaning of these words to hate your parents, your spouse, your children, your siblings, is counter to everything else we know about Jesus. The core of Jesus’s message is to love. He summed it up when asked what the greatest commandment is, and he said to love the Lord your God with all your heart, mind, and soul, and to love your neighbor as yourself. On these two hang all the law and the prophets. It is a message he repeated time and again, and was something he embodied in his actions, his compassion, his healing, his care, his feeding, and in his going to the cross. Wren asked what it’s all about, he says there is no greater love than this, that one lays down one’s life for one’s friends. That is what the cross is all about, the love of Jesus for us.
We know that is not just the words of Jesus, but his actions point to this love. We know the earliest Disciples understood that love was the center of Jesus’s message. We hear a bit of that in today’s reading from Paul to Onesimus when he talks about trying to appeal to him in love, because he knows that love is the center of their faith. We hear it also in the beautiful reading from 1st Corinthians, Chapter 13. I did a wedding yesterday, so I got to hear it again. If you have faith that can move mountains but you don’t love, it’s worthless. If you can prophesy and speak in tongues but you don’t have love, you’re just a noisy cymbal, a clanging gong. God gives us three great gifts that are more important than all the others: faith, hope, and love. And among those three the greatest of them is love. Paul very much understood that love had primacy, that love was the center of the Gospel message. Other Disciples had the same idea. 1st John, Chapter 4: Beloved, let us love one another for love is of God. Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. When we look at the fullness of Scripture, we know that love is the message. So what do we make of Jesus saying to hate anyone, let alone your family?
Let’s take a step back from this reading for a moment and look at it in its bigger context. Jesus, as that moment in time, is moving towards Jerusalem where he is going to be crucified. He knows that. He’s talking about that, although no one else understands what he is talking about. And as he goes toward Jerusalem he is teaching, he is healing, he is acting in love, and he is getting pushback. He doesn’t get much pushback for the words about love, but he does when he performs actions in love, like when he tries to heal someone on the Sabbath.
He has a moment a couple of chapters earlier where he says that this message that he has brought might create division among people. It might put parent against child and child against parent. That is where this passage today is coming in. It is in that context that this message of love might create division, and you might find there is resistance coming from your family. And in those cases you have to chose the Gospel. You have to chose love over hatred. It is weird, a little paradoxical that these words about hating are trying to pull you back into that very love that is the center, the core of Jesus’s message. Acts of love can get pushback because sometimes love demands things of people that they don’t want to do. Sometimes it requires us to give something up in order for someone else to have. And sometimes those of us who have don’t want to do that. Sometimes acts of love require us to be there for someone when we’d rather not. Sometimes love asks us to be uncomfortable when we’d rather just be comfortable. So Jesus is saying that if someone is not on board with these acts of love, with this Gospel message, you need to keep your eyes focused on that love. Family is such a critical part here, because family ties are strong. In the 1st century in Palestine, these ties were very strong. It seemed that nothing was more important. But Jesus is saying there are things that are more important, that love of God, that love of neighbor is more important. And when the family gets in the way, you have to keep moving forward.
These words of Jesus are strange to me when I first hear them because my family is a place of love, a place where I learned about God, a place where I experience God’s love. So these words of the Gospel to hate my family are not really Good News on their face. But from someone who comes from an abusive family, someone who comes from a place where there is not love, these words may be balm. To know that they do not have to prioritize family over that love, that family ties are not more important. When we find ourselves in those environments of abuse or hatred, environments without love, we sometimes have to separate ourselves from them for awhile in order to keep ourselves focused on that love, and do not fall into that hatred.
We hear more of this message at the end when Jesus talks about giving up possessions as the same kind of thing. We need to pull ourselves away from those things that draw us away from that love of God so that we can stay focused on that love. It is not to actually hate your family, but it is in a very odd way to love them, to show them that love has the priority over everything with the hope, the ultimate goal, the ultimate desire of Jesus for reconciliation, which is another act of love, is held out there. But we always have to stay focused on that love.
So, my friends in Christ, remember to love, stay focused on that love. And when its demands are too much, remember that God’s love will carry you forward. Do you remember that Jesus said whoever does not carry the cross and follow me cannot be my disciple? Do you remember what happened to the Disciples? They couldn’t carry that cross. They abandoned Jesus, but his love was strong enough for them.
AMEN
